Night Is Mine

by M. L. Buchman

  “Right.” He wiggled her toes, first in decreasing sizes, then in increasing ones. Her extremities sent no complaints.

  “Okay, past history. You were gone. Off to whatever Ivy League, Mister Too-smart-for-his-own-good sort of place you went.” And Mister Way-too-old-and-too-nice-to-be-hers. That’s one thing she knew about herself, she wasn’t nice. How else had she survived all those years of climbing through the male military structure? She’d torn into enough newbies who’d questioned her skills to know she could be a flaming, sneaky, bad-tempered bitch when cornered. She just hid it well in public.

  “I’d already jumped a grade when you left. I ground through my four years and vowed I’d never waste that much time again. Did West Point in three. Fourth year was all independent study. No one in high school or at the Point had any use for an underaged, underdeveloped punk.”

  “That sure changed.”

  “What? The underaged part?” Leave it to Peter to work in a smooth compliment like that without the usual male bravado or staring at her chest, not that there was much to stare at even now. Though maybe he was. She couldn’t tell. And leave it to her drugged-out brain not to leave a decent compliment alone. Or just say, “Thanks,” and move on.

  “Right, you doofus. You’re old.”

  “You’re older.”

  “True. Back to school.”

  It wasn’t the way the Peter she knew had ever talked about her. To her. Too little, too late.

  “Being one of the few people to ever crank out the Point in three years kinda set me up for the rules. I liked the structure. I liked knowing where the game was and that I was a player in it. A good player, even. I’m proud of what I’ve done. I’m proud of my flying, of my fl—”

  Her throat closed on her. The drugs let go of her brain all at once, and reality crash-landed front and center. The one thing she was most proud of. The one thing she did right in this world, really right. And she needed perfect vision to get there.

  Peter’s hand clamped around her foot, hard. Held it tight. Anchored her in time and place. It was real. The pain of his grip was real. She focused on that for all she was worth.

  “The doctors said they had to wait at least twenty-four more hours.” His voice changed. Now it rang with certainty. “There are enough anti-inflammatories in you to fix the worst hangover a bull elephant ever suffered from too much jungle juice the night before.”

  He’d become the Commander-in-Chief who was all business. This was the other Peter, the man in charge. She might not know him, but she liked him. Someone strong enough to take care of you when all around you was darkness. Literally.

  “I brought in the best radiant-light weapons team the Army has and their top medicos. Even now they’re resimulating the flash based on all available data and weapon characteristics. The best eye doctor in the country and the top neurosurgeon the Mayo Clinic could offer spent an hour with you while you were out, then half a day poking through your MRIs.”

  He didn’t ease up on her foot. It was starting to hurt, but she wasn’t going to say anything that might make him let go. Or stop telling her what she most needed to hear.

  “A press-corps hack was doing standard film-clip shots on the White House lawn. He bungled the byline completely, wrong station and messed up his own name, but his cameraman shot first-class footage. Didn’t miss a single second of your flight. The flight controllers I brought over from the Marine squad to inspect the footage said the flying was beyond anything they’d ever seen. Sent it down to SOAR at Fort Campbell who agreed they wouldn’t want to try to repeat that particular flight.”

  He’d mobilized half the country on her behalf.

  “The hack wanted to broadcast the film first. The guy behind the lens gave it straight to the Secret Service right there on the grounds. I have to call the station manager about not firing his butt for that. He caught the burst on film so we have a good idea of the range and energy output. For comparison, we found another Bell 430 side window from the same production week. We had it flown down from Boston. Identical piece of Plexiglas, or as near as it gets. They’re firing the weapon through it in order to estimate the amount of radiant energy that reached you.”

  He’d mobilized the entire country on behalf of her eyes.

  “They give you better than odds-on of seeing again. They give you a fair chance of no effect once the swelling goes down. Not great, but fair. I’ve even talked to a team of doctors working on eye transplants. Not ready for at least another decade, if ever, but I’ve learned that corneal transplants are common and easy. Well, easy for these guys. You wouldn’t want me to try doing it. But they insist your corneas aren’t scarred.”

  She focused on breathing. Slow, steady, deep, she told herself. Felt as if she were breathing more at rabbit speed.

  “So, we leave the bandages on until tomorrow. They offered to drug you out if it was too upsetting.” He eased his hold on her foot and returned to playing with her toes.

  “But…” she prompted.

  He kept his silence.

  “Sneaker Boy, what did you say and who did you say it to?”

  His fingers stopped on her toes. She could feel his grin, even through his fingertips. It must have been something wicked to see.

  “I told them they had no idea who they were messing with and that if they wanted to still have fingers to practice surgery with by tomorrow morning, they had best not mention you being weak about anything. Not around you, and definitely not around me.”

  “And…” There was more, though she could feel the heat rising to her face from the first part. Hopefully there were enough bandages to hide it.

  “I, um, bet them a grand each that you’d be flying within the week. I didn’t give them a lot of choice on the bet, either. Every now and then, there are advantages to being the leader of the most powerful fighting force on the planet.”

  Chapter 27

  Emily fretted through the night and the day. Or the day and the night. No real difference lying on a hospital bed wearing eye bandages. The hallways had grown quiet for a long time, then louder for a brief time, but not much. Nurses and food came and went. Then the silence had clamped down. The longest night of her life stretched out forever.

  Daniel had come in briefly and done his best to be funny. But it was a quieter, more somber Daniel. After a particularly long and awkward silence, he finally whispered to her; “Never knew what being close to death meant.”

  Emily knew. Had faced it for the first time as her pilot had bled out in her lap while they lay hidden in the godforsaken Thai jungle. She’d had to keep his mouth clamped shut against his groans of pain so he couldn’t even say any last words as he died. The opium runners who’d shot them down crisscrossed less than five feet from where she’d hidden them. She’d faced death a dozen times since, and every time as horrible. This had just been a bad scrape.

  They sat together in awkward silence for a few more minutes, holding hands before Daniel complained that his concussion still pounded away at him with a roaring headache. With a final squeeze of her hand, he returned to his room.

  Her parents had come. Worried. Fussed. Her mother had said several completely inappropriate things about how Emily had had such pretty eyes and wouldn’t it be a pity if she could never see again.

  Emily felt touched that her mother was so upset that she’d forgotten her perfect manners and felt guilty but relieved when her father escorted her mother from the room. Alone again. In the silence.

  At the very darkest hour of her personal night, at the moment she longed to tear and shred the bandages, at the moment she knew for a fact she’d never see nor fly again, a hand took hers. The sudden comfort was such a relief that she cried out. And then she wept for the first time in a decade, holding the hand with all her strength between both of hers.

  It was a man’s hand. Not Daniel’s nor Peter’s. Not soft.

  Powerful. Protective. Well callused. She could hold a hand like that forever and know she’d be safe to th
e end of her days.

  The hand pulled her. Pulled her until she curled in its owner’s lap.

  She wept against his shoulder.

  She wept while the sobs wracked her body, until the only things keeping her from flying apart were the strong arms around her. Wept until she was wrung dry. Wept until the fear left her. Wept until she remembered that Night Stalkers Don’t Quit.

  Emily simply curled against the man who held her, her head tucked safe beneath his chin.

  Then he cupped her cheek with one of those wonderful hands and held her head ever so gently against his chest.

  She knew that hand. Now that she could think, she’d known it from the first instant it had taken hers.

  Major Mark Henderson. She’d wept on his shoulder like a scared little girl, not a woman playing tough in a man’s world. And she’d never felt so safe in her life.

  Mark Henderson, the toughest commander she’d ever had in a long line of the Army’s best. A man who flew like a god. A man who she could respect. He had kissed her. That had made a memory she could enjoy.

  And he’d held her when she most needed it. That created a space in her heart.

  She slid a hand free and, discovering his beret, tipped it from his head, releasing that soft mass of hair. She curled her fingers into it at the back of his neck. Lifting her head, she pulled his down.

  He resisted. Held back, asking without words if she was sure.

  She didn’t think. Didn’t want to think. Didn’t want to analyze, understand, calculate, and estimate. She just wanted to kiss him to know if it had been real.

  She pulled him down the last half inch, and his lips met hers.

  There. The electric shock hadn’t been her imagination. Her memory of that fleeting moment on the aircraft carrier proved trustworthy. It rang like a great bell all the way down to her toes. He tasted of woodsmoke on winter’s air. Of rich, dark, sun-baked garden earth heated by the sun. He tasted most definitely of man. Man with a capital M and an exclamation point besides.

  When he offered to retreat, she dug her fingers in harder, kept his mouth in place against hers.

  With a low moan, that could have come from a wounded animal, he gave in all at once. He buried his face at her neck and held on. Held on like a man drowning.

  Emily wanted to throw her head back and howl at the sky. This man, this warrior, would do anything she asked. For this moment, in this place, she controlled the beast. And as clearly as when flying, she knew exactly what she wanted.

  Dress-blue service uniform, her fingers told her. The man was wearing dress blues in her hospital room. Bet he looked damn good in them, too. All formal and broad shouldered. How he looked, though, wasn’t a really big motivator at this moment. She undid the three brass buttons, shoving the jacket back off his shoulders, pinning his arms. As he struggled free of that, she pulled off the tie and unbuttoned his shirt. Finally, unable to get it clear, she yanked it off over his head.

  Then she wallowed against that glorious chest. Her hands flew over the landscape until she knew each curve of every well-defined muscle. Could feel the ripple of his uncertainty as she fed upon him, rubbing her cheek on his shoulder where she’d wept her heart out minutes before. His hands, he never knew what to do with his hands, appeared paralyzed on her shoulders, neither drawing her in nor pushing her away.

  A nibble on his rib cage caused a sudden twitch.

  She tried it again. Twitch and a squirm.

  Major Mark “The Viper” Henderson was ticklish. Oh, this was too divine.

  In moments they were a snarled up mess of arms and legs struggling for purchase as he strove to protect himself.

  ***

  Mark swore beneath his breath.

  What was it with this woman?

  He trapped her hands.

  Didn’t she know she was injured?

  With a twist, she tucked a leg up in a move so flexible it shouldn’t be possible and attacked his ribs with her toes.

  Didn’t she know the nurse’s station stood only a dozen meters down the corridor? And the night light… No, she wouldn’t know about that.

  He managed to fend off the leg but lost one of the hands.

  Rather than going back for his ticklish spot, she slid her hand down over his pants. He’d felt guilty for being aroused when he held her while she wept. How could so much pain be trapped in so slight a body without flying apart? But holding her, he’d felt strong and, well, aroused.

  And when her hand grabbed him through his pants, his arousal snapped to full attention.

  No! He wasn’t going to take advantage of her. Not in her current state. Through brute force, as much against his desire as against her actions, he managed to get them back to sitting upright on the hospital bed. Still in his lap, but with her legs wrapped somehow around either side of his waist. Not the strategically safe scenario he’d been aiming for.

  Gently, all the wrestling violence of hand-to-hand combat gone in a moment, she reached one hand to his face. She ran gentle fingertips over his eyes as he closed them. So gentle, as if the slightest breeze had brushed over his eyelids. Then she ran a thumb over his lips and left it there. He took it lightly between his teeth, but she pulled it back until it rested on his closed lips once more. No need to tell him to be quiet. He considered looking to see if a nurse was coming, but he couldn’t turn away from her.

  With the grace of a butterfly taking wing, she reached back over her shoulder and pulled the tie on the hospital gown. A shrug and it slipped free to pool in their laps, dangling from the one arm that reached to his face, but hiding nothing.

  Not even in his fantasies had she looked this good—and she’d looked damn incredible in his fantasies. Dressed only in dog tags, her body awash in pale gold shadows of the night light.

  He wanted to tell her how magnificent she was. How much he wanted her.

  Her thumb kept his lips closed but rubbed back and forth.

  A smile lit her face, only then did he put together what she was doing. She was feeling his smile because she couldn’t see it.

  Ever so slowly, in perfect, agonizing, movie slow-motion, she lay back into shadows. Totally open to him.

  He hadn’t brought any protection. Would never have thought he’d need it. And he wasn’t about to go ask the nurse for any. That only left a few thousand options in his imagination. So, tonight would be about those. About her. He liked that. Completely about her. He kissed her right below the dog tags between those perfect breasts.

  Chapter 28

  Emily woke slowly, languidly, stretched out, and clanked her hand against the bed rail of the hospital bed. A quick brush confirmed that the sheets and hospital gown once again covered her.

  “How are we feeling this morning?”

  Standard nurse question. One she most certainly wasn’t planning to answer directly.

  “Fine.” Floating. “No more headache.” Liquid. “I’m hungry.” Smiling with every square centimeter of her body.

  Her brain offered to dismiss last night as a mere dream, after all, Mark was in Southwest Asia. And they’d never said a word. Not a single word.

  Yet her body insisted she’d been wide awake every single, solitary, soaring, rocketing instant of Mark’s exquisite attention to her tingling flesh. He’d taken her places she didn’t know you could go and still be alive afterward. Places you could only reach with someone you trusted implicitly. She wanted the nurse gone so that she could relish every moment, every instant of—

  With a blast of noise and activity, several people entered the room, easily a half dozen by all the rustling.

  “Hey, Squirt.” That explained it.

  “Hey, Sneaker Boy.” Again the barely controlled laugh from an unseen person in the room. Mark? Was he still here? Or had he departed as silently as he’d made love to her. Or at least to her body. He’d given exactly what she’d needed. Though how he came to be in her hospital room rather than—

  The doctors took over. Questions about pain, none. Dizz
iness, none. Sleep, almost none. But she wouldn’t mention that. Felt too good to mention that. Chart shows you’re hungry, good. How do you feel? Frustrated enough to rip your throat out if you don’t do something about these damned bandages, fantastic enough to be dubbed Queen for the Day.

  They finally got down to it. Someone ordered the room lights dimmed. Someone else tipped up the bed until she was mostly sitting. And, at long last, the bandages began to come off. They kept explaining what they expected to see and the worst possible scenario.

  She’d had better training so she forced herself to focus on the best possible outcome. Focus on strength, and you will be strong. Focus on weakness, and you will wind up dead.

  “I see light.” And she did. Vague, fuzzy, but a brightness through the remaining layers of bandages.

  An excited buzz filled the room that the doctor abruptly silenced.

  “Even if there is nothing wrong with your eyes, they may be a little blurry at first. You haven’t used them in three days. Think of it as waking up. But I don’t want you to rub them.”

  Not until she acknowledged his instructions would he proceed.

  The last few layers came free.

  The images were dim, blurry.

  Each time she blinked, they became clearer. But they didn’t brighten.

  “Why’s it so dark?” She fought to keep the fear from ripping out of her gut.

  “The lights are very low in the room.” She’d forgotten. A deep breath. Two. Three, and she felt a little better. She glanced sideways at the rack of med equipment, and the brightness of its dials appeared normal. She turned back and blinked a few more times.

  “The focus seems good.” She could clearly see two doctors, a nurse, and Peter’s anxious face hovering over her. More were hidden back in the shadows.

  She could see. The relief welled up inside until it threatened to bury her. Then the fears rolled forward like an advancing line of tanks. She could see, but how well? In the darkened room, everything was soft-edged. And color. Any significant loss of color acuity, and she’d be relegated to flying transports the rest of her life.